


Just Another Day at the Office

by DoctorStrange



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2408480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorStrange/pseuds/DoctorStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if "You're my mission" meant exactly that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Day at the Office

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Foxsuke (ShadowRese)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowRese/gifts).



> A birthday gift for my sister -

     James stared at darkness between the buildings across from his room. He had stared at that darkness all night, every night, for the past three weeks; it was the longest he had gone without extended sleep. The stress of it was starting to get to him, like the worn heels of a soldier who has been marching far too long. His long dark hair was stringy, in need of washing; the stubble on his cheeks was long past five o’clock.

  
     His mind wandered, briefly, and he was back in his childhood home, his parents explaining to him that he was destined for greatness, that he would accomplish something that no other could hope to achieve. James had always assumed that every parent told their child things like that. With no children of his own, his work had never allowed it and he had never been in love with a woman in his life, James would never know. Getting up, leaning lightly against the window pane, James breathed a sigh of contemplation and took a drink of water. It was cool in his mouth, refreshing. He sat back down, unable to go to bed as he had been every night of late.

  
     James thought of his youth, each memory coming back to him slowly, like a cogs or gears in a watch filling out the whole. The man that he had called his grandfather had repaired watches when he was a child. James had sat and watched for hours while the man had painstakingly brushed each tiny gear, holding them in a pair of gold tweezers before placing them gently into open back of the watches. “Remember James,” He had said” each piece must fit just so.”

     All of his life James had strived to live up to the potential that had been instilled in him. Each night he imagined that this would be the moment he had lived for, the culmination of his days on earth; his purpose fulfilled. As a child he had had so much expectation heaped upon him.

  
     James glared into the blackness, searching the night for a star.

  
     He turned his attention back to the window catching a brief glimpse of movement in the shadow. Curious, he leaned in, placed his eye upon the viewfinder, not of telescope sitting in his window, but of a high powered Dragunov sniper rifle and adjusted the sights. There, emblazoned upon the dark blue of the night was the gleaming white of a star.  
James “Bucky” Barnes, codename Winter Soldier, shed one tear for his lost youth, and gently squeezed the trigger. He had finally seen his fallen star.

*****

     Sweat dripped into the man’s eyes stinging and blurring his vision as his feet pounded the ground beneath him. His short blonde hair, damp, stuck to his forehead; his breath was short, ragged, and his side burned worse than his chest ached. The wetness of his tightly fitted shirt made it cling to his skin.

  
     His friend was twenty paces ahead of him, straining in the night air to keep his distance. All things considered, Steve was satisfied that the lead was only twenty paces or so, but he remembered a time that he could easily have outpaced the man ahead of him. Of course, there was a time before that when he was unable to keep up with his friend entirely , and would only have tried because of a stubborn dogged desire to be more than he was.

  
     Steve wondered if it would always be like this; the two of them leapfrogging in ability. It was the sign, he felt, of a good partnership. He wondered if James saw it that way.  
Neither of the two men had exactly picked a destination when they had taken off, and as such, Steve had no idea where this run might end up, but the buildings around him told him he was in the neighborhood that the two of them had grown up in. Pain shot through Steve’s side again as James pushed ahead.

  
     James turned down and alley. After all these years, much of the old neighborhood had changed but the building beside them was familiar. James had lived there as a child.  
Steve slowed to a halt, looking puzzled at his friend. He tried to catch his breath but the bullet wound next to his lung ached with a sharp throb that made him dizzy. Clutching his chest, smearing blood on the star in the center of his uniform, Captain America fell to the ground.

*****

“You understand that your son, this child you say you love so much, will never have a normal life? He will be raised, by you and an operative placed in close proximity to you, to isolate and eliminate what could be the singular most powerful threat to our organization ever conceived.”Strucker’s heavy German accent lent an ominous tone to the words he spoke.

     “When your leader sent you to us in exile he explicitly gave us leave to, shall we say, make use of you as was seen fitting. The fact that you concealed your pregnancy to us upon your arrival alone is befitting of punishment.”

  
     The eyes of the man and woman blurred with tears; they knew what this sentence meant to them. The punishment of passing secrets to the American government would not be served by them, but by the child whom they sought to create a better life for in the first place. This was the type of ruling that Hydra was most feared for.

  
     “Understand,” Strucker said “I do not ask you this to imply you have a choice in the matter. Rest assured you do not. Before you are released and sent away I want to hear you say the words. I want to know that you understand what your disloyalty to your country has wrought.”

  
     “Our…disloyalty, has earned us, not a pardon, but a sort of stay of execution. The price we pay will be prolonged over the rest of our lives. We are to use our contacts in the U.S to secure passage to New York, where we will raise our child to become your creature. He will pay for our crimes.” The man whispered with a trembling voice.

  
     “Precisely” Strucker exclaimed. “But you can ease your minds by telling yourselves that your child will be a fully functioning tool of Hydra. He will kill the United States Government's most powerful soldier. A soldier who, like your own son has yet to be born and he will never even know, or question, why.”

*****

     James “Bucky” Barnes and Captain Steve Rogers sat three feet apart from each other in the dark living room of an old house. Both of the men knew it very well. They had spent time in their childhood years getting to know each other, becoming friends. They had developed a bond of friendship so close that years and sins and blood had been unable to come between.

  
     “You have been looking for me; since that day I pulled you from the water.” It was a statement, not a question and Steve felt it like an accusation. Though he knew Bucky meant it differently, he couldn’t help but hear something else entirely.

  
     “You just started looking for me.” Those words said. “What happened to all the time in between?”

  
     “The truth is, I have been looking for you to find me.” Bucky said to him quietly.

  
     Steve’s heart skipped. Bucky wanted to be found? Why had he shot him then? Steve remembered his words to him. “You were my mission.” What did it mean?

  
      “Let me explain something to you. This may take awhile, so I suggest applying pressure to that wound with this.”

     Bucky handed Steve a thick gauzy pad. Steve pressed it to his chest. He removed his belt and wrapped it once around his thick chest, ratcheting it tightly against the hole in his flesh. He would have quite a scar to show Natasha he thought. A bullet wound to match hers, probably from the same gun. He wondered what she might be up to now. Had she found the absolution that she sought. She had been the one to provide him with the information needed to track down his old friend. Had she, the closest thing he had to a friend now, understood just what this reunion meant to him. She had looked like she had.

  
     “The wound is clean. The only way that shot will kill you is if I let you bleed to death here. I haven’t decided yet, before you ask.”

     Bucky took a long breath. No mission that had ever been on had been this hard, as difficult as starting the sentence he had to start now. He breathed again, and began. “My parents were traitors to their country. During the first world war they provided information to America. They took little money, just enough to begin setting up a household. What they were looking to do was twofold. They hoped to make the world a safer, better place, and they hoped to one day have a child that they could bring to America and raise free of the strict European rule. They succeeded only partially.”

  
     Bucky’s eyes remained locked on the ceiling, staring blankly; though his words were meant for Steve, it was impossible for him to look him in the eye. He continued.  
“They were caught. They were given as a peace gesture to Hydra for punishment. By this time they were expecting me. The planned child. Hydra's punishment was to take from them the one thing they most wanted; my future. They were forced to raise me with one goal in mind. The man who you knew as my grandfather was a Hydra agent set to watch over us. I was to grow up and befriend a potential threat to Hydra. I was trained to fight, to kill if necessary, and to conceal these abilities until they might be needed. If this threat were to ever come to fruition I was to acquire or eliminate it. No one else was to harm this individual in case he could prove useful. I knew nothing but my mission. Years I spent cultivating my friendship, protecting my goal even from himself. My life was my cover, and you. You, Captain America, were always my mission.”

*****

 

    _Why didn’t you kill me Bucky? I have asked myself that question for years now. How it is that I have never asked you is even more of a mystery to me. I suppose one falls in love with their work, so to speak, and I imagine that is all the answer I will ever get. You and I have been friends now for so long I can’t remember the actual years. That day on the riverbank, when you dragged me from the water, and that night in your old house when you confessed everything to me, you had your chance. You must have had dozens of them before that. Do you remember what I said to you, after you told me about your parents, about your past? I always thought I was looking out for you. As confident as you always were, there was doubt in your eyes. You always looked like someone questioning your very existence. It never mattered why you were my friend Bucky, because I was yours. You needed one. You left me there that night, the clean bullet wound slowly bleeding out, without another word. You must have come back, because after I passed out someone dressed the wound, bandaged me up, kept me alive. When I finally saw you again you said that your job was done. We began the slow process of becoming friends for the first time again. Now, after all this time I tell you my secret. I have always been what you needed me to be. Friend, partner, even, if necessary, your mission. That has always been what I wanted. We have never told each other so many things. We never needed to. If you are reading this then my mission has gone wrong. Take care of yourself as you took care of me._

_Goodbye Friend,_  
 _Steve Rogers_

*****

**Epilogue**

     Captain America placed the letter in an envelope and sealed it in the lockbox on his desk. The sun was streaming through the blinds, and a gentle breeze blew the cool New York air into his apartment. Bucky knew where the key would be placed; under the rug that the desk rested on. He also knew that no matter what, Bucky would only retrieve it if something happened to him. In an hour, Cap would be on a plane to Africa, his mission underway, but he trusted his friend to watch his back. He wondered if one day, Bucky might actually have to read this letter. He hoped not. Picking up his shield, Captain American headed out for Wakanda.


End file.
